hi everyone and welcome back to my channel Learn Academic English today i'm continuing
my series of grammar shorts videos with a quick lesson on how to use the words despite
in spite of and despite the fact that these words are common especially in writing so let's start
with the meaning what do these words mean well first of all despite and in spite of have exactly
the same meaning so if you're wondering what the difference is between despite and in spite of
there is no difference I prefer to use the word despite because in writing one of my goals
is to be concise to use a smaller number of words to express my idea clearly and for that reason
I choose despite it's shorter than in spite of but you can use either one what do these words
mean they show unexpected contrast so they have a similar meaning to although even though and yet of
course the grammar is very different these words are conjunctions so they are used with clauses but
despite and in spite of are prepositions because they are prepositions they are always going to be
followed by a noun or a noun phrase so let's see some examples first the topic of today's sentences
is solar powerI always like to have a theme with my examples to give a little bit of context
solar power as you probably know is power that is generated from the sun and this is a hot topic
where i live in California because the state of California has a lot of policies to try to have a
cleaner environment and to fight climate change so we have a lot of oh and we have a lot of sun here
so we have a lot of discussions about solar power in my state so let's see the first example
despite the benefits of solar power people have been slow to adopt this technology
so what do we have here we have the word despite and then we have a noun phrase we have the noun
benefits and it's a noun phrase because it's a group of words we have a prepositional phrase
here that is coming after benefits but despite and then the rest of it is the noun phrase
we're always going to put a comma here because this introduces the sentence or it's at the
beginning of the sentence and then the main part of the sentence is going to be this clause
with the subject people and verb have been let's look at the next one people have been slow to
adopt solar panels despite the benefits so here we have basically the same sentence but what I did is
I moved this to the end of the sentence i wanted you to see that you can put it at the beginning or
at the end notice that when we put it at the end there is no comma okay next let's look
at in spite of in spite of the rebates offered by the state solar panels are often considered
expensive so first of all do you know the word rebates rebates is money that the government
will give you to encourage you to do something so for example in California the state is trying to
make the environment better so the state has a lot of rebates that they offer people to do different
changes to their homes to make their home more energy efficient so again this is money that
the state will give you to do something that the state wants you to do okay so let's look at the
sentence in spite of the rebates offered by the state solar panels are often considered expensive
here we have in spite of and then we have this long thing here this is a noun phrase
so we have the noun rebates and then what do we have here here we have a reduced adjective
clause that is describing rebates what kind of rebates rebates that are offered by the state
okay so we have this long noun phrase after in spite of we're going to use a comma here
and then this is the main part of our sentence and notice that you can put in spite of
or despite at the beginning of the sentence or at the end let's see how we can put it in the middle
California requires new homes to have solar panels and despite the cost homeowners
appreciate this policy so what do we have here we have a compound sentence with two clauses we have
subject California verb requires and then in the second part of the sentence we have homeowners
as the subject and the verb appreciate and these clauses are combined with the conjunction and and
we have despite the cost introducing the second clause so let's read it one more time California
requires new homes to have solar panels and despite the cost homeowners appreciate this policy
so even though they are expensive homeowners appreciate them okay
next I'm going to show you two other ways that you can use these words including how to use
despite the fact that now let's look at a couple other ways that you can use despite or
in spite of so sometimes the idea that you want to talk about needs to include a subject
and a verb without that subject and verb it's just not as clear so how can you
use despite or in spite of with a clause with a longer group of words that has a subject and verb
you can do it if you use despite the fact that so let's see this one despite the fact
that solar panels save people money in the long run most people are not willing to buy them so
what do we see here we have the word despite the fact that and then we have a clause here we have
solar panels as the subject and verb is save then we have our comma at the end of that first part
and then we have the main part of the sentence with the main subject and main verb
so this is very common and instead of doing that you could say although or even though
like although solar panels save people money blah blah blah okay another thing that you can do is
that you can take out this subject and then you can change this verb to a noun
and you know that to do that you need to make a gerund so we can change this verb to the noun
saving with ing but we have to be careful when we do that and let me show you how that works
so for example in this sentence despite saving people money in the long run
most people are not willing to buy solar panels so this sentence is not correct the reason is that
what is the subject of this what is saving solar panels but what is the subject of the next part
of the sentence people so those two don't match and for that reason we cannot do it for this one
so let's look at a sentence that's correct despite saving people money in the long run solar panels
are still not very popular so in this case what is saving people money solar panels and solar panels
is the subject of the next part so in that case the subjects match and this sentence is correct
so i'm bringing this up because it's pretty common that you want to use despite but you don't have a
noun and you need to take a verb and make it into a noun in order to use despite or in spite of
don't forget that you can also use a subject and a verb like we did here
or if you do that you can also use although or even though because they have the same meaning
so as always i will leave a question down in the description box below and you can practice this
grammar with me let me know if you have questions and I'll see you back here next time take care!